Woke up at a beautiful but late 11:00 A.M.  Simply delicious.

Studied more King videos today.  Added another 40 questions or so to what I've studied so far.  I think I'm about 60% done with the questions.

Was supposed to fly with Van around 2:00-ish, but his flight with Jyri went longer than expected.  We ended up flying, but it was more of a joy-ride than training.  Which was no problem to me, really.  I loved it.  I'm not goin' to lie, there is a bit of nervousness on the first flight after an overhaul, but it was fun.  The Cessna 172 is back in service, and we were more than happy to try her out.  We did some pretty aggressive climbs (over 1000 feet per minute), and we just flew her around to get a feel for her.  She has a rebuilt engine on her, and everything is pretty much a bit different than before.  I think she has a little more power, but I never flew her before to really know.  But she is a faithful little bird.  A nice flyer.

Van let me take the controls for a bit, and I put 0.4 hours on her.  Steep climbs, turns, and even my first spin!  No joke.  Van took the controls, and brought it back to the stalling point, and she broke all right...the next thing I know I am literally staring right at the earth.  No lie.  I mean, I have been in some pretty steep descents before, but this was a first.  I am literally dive-bombing towards the earth.  There it is below me...right out of the windshield!!!  Quite an experience.

We only spun a half turn, and frankly, it all happened so fast, but I'm not goin' to lie...it was pretty intense.  I knew he was goin' into a stall, but I wasn't prepared for him to let it go straight down!  But it was a good lesson in just how stable the 172 is...the airplane came out of it before we could even get one spin in it.  Pretty impressive.

I flew for a bit, then headed back to the airport.  It was nice to actually take a VFR flight and see Chanute.  I'm always climbin' to a certain altitude or under the hood, and even though I've been here three weeks, this was really my first time of lookin' at the town!!!  It's kinda nice to have that opportunity...

I flew back to Runway 18, and we had a nice 10-knot crosswind...right at 90 degrees.  But the Cessna is easy to handle, and I was able to put it down...although I did over-flare and I had a little bump.  Grr!!!

But I'm checked out in the 172 now.  So that's nice.

A Cessna Grand Caravan had flown in this morning.  It's a pretty funny lookin' airplane...it looks like a Cessna 172 with a long stretch!  Personally, I think they look goofy, but after inspectin' it a little more, I would be happy to fly it.  This one in particular is close to new, and the exterior and interior shows.  It's pretty stinkin' nice.  The people that flew in today are goin' on a huntin' expedition about 30 miles away.  I guess that happens quite a bit...people come in to hunt some birds.  But it's kinda fun(ny) to think that I'll be able to fly this at 250 hours.  I mean, it's just a single-engine land airplane...it just has a turbine engine.  But again, it's goofy-lookin'.  See the pic.

Jarryd and I were talkin', and we concluded that someone here has to be rich.  The Caravan sports Bose headsets throughout ($1000 apiece), and the trip itself for the hunt has to be in the thousands (yes, of course, we climbed on the wheels and looked inside the airplane!).  They came up from San Antonio, Texas, for the weekend.  So someone is spendin' $5000? on a fun weekend.  It's just crazy to think about.

Studied some more King videos tonight, then Jarryd and Jyri and I decided to hit the town.  We ended up goin' to the Safari Restaurant and Brewery about 9:00 P.M., and we stayed there until 1:45 A.M.  It's a really fancy hotel and restaurant, and I wondered if I wasn't in Boston as opposed to Chanute...

And that in itself was kind of crazy.  Chanute actually has a Friday-night night-life.  We had some older ladies payin' for our pool play, and I was more than happy to play some billiards at their expense.  We also met a couple of girls, and I think we're goin' to do somethin' with them tomorrow.  A pretty interesting night in terms of Chanute, but it was enjoyable...I saw everything from dancing to arm-wrestling.  True story.

Went to bed at 2:30 A.M.

I'm plannin' on checkin' out a motorcycle tomorrow.  It's not too pretty, but Mike said that he would be more than happy to paint it for me, and frankly, I'm eager to learn that skill.  So we'll see what happens there.

I don't plan to wake up before noon.

Oh, and Jarryd's checkride was bumped back until Sunday afternoon.  The visibility was only 1/4 mile with fog this morning at Kansas City, and the vertical visibility was only 100 feet.  Not exactly prime conditions...but he re-scheduled for Sunday.